David’s Go Dojo

Tuesday night is my customary night to play an over-the-board match of Go, so I headed to the Seattle Go Center for my game. I was there for a short time but there was nobody looking for a match, about 5 matches in progress. There are sometimes spouses and other non-go playing significant others who are at the Center, but not looking to engage in conversation or interact generally. After watching a few games in progress, I left to secure a quick but healthy-ish dinner nearby.

When I got back, there were perhaps twice as many people as before, although still no Jon Boley. Apparently he is away for a while, so other senior players take turns stewarding the place and greeting unfamiliar faces. I watched the end of a match on a 13×13 board, and once it was over was able to make some comments on the ending and contribute. I counted it out silently as an exercise, and so knew that it was over already but that playing it out was a learning experience and kept my peace. One of the interested watchers looked like he might be interested in a game, so I asked him for a match and we played a game on a nearby 13×13 board.

And so I came to play a game with Andy. He was a fellow novice, and had no idea of his relative strength, but was familiar enough with the rules to play a good game. I explained a bit about ranks, or stones, and then we agreed upon a 4 stone handicap on the 13 square board. It was very enjoyable, and tough to the end. Black ended up winning by around 15 points or so, which goes to show that a 4 stone handicap counts for a LOT more than the same on a 19×19 board! But all around, it was a learning experience; I got sloppy and let a group die that shouldn’t have and was meant to become an excellent buttress. I make good fast shapes, but then have to defend them well enough to make it stick.

I like thinking of a python squeezing out a shape; if another player is unable to make life in the “bubbles” on the board, then all the stones inside die, as if swallowed whole by a snake. On the other hand, I didn’t win, so I don’t get to give much advice…

I sent him an email recommendation on the spot and tried to warmly welcome him to playing Go on the Beginners Night there at the SGC Tuesdays, or online at KGS, or anywhere at all that he could find a match and a partner. He asked me what I thought the best way to get started getting stronger at Go was, and I thought that it was good enough of a question I would post a thorough answer.

(more…)

Aiden said “Da Da” this morning, clear as day to me! WOW!

I managed to get myself to the SGC Tuesday night for a game, and although I didn’t get a chance to take any pictures of the game since Jon was playing with my phone, it was just as well since it was a disaster best left unfinished as it was, and perhaps the lessons learned become immortalized instead of the clumsy game it was being recorded. The pleasant conversation with surrounders (a 3kyu young boy fresh from Go camp) and the council of one of the “regulars” there at the Center was more than good enough for an abbreviated evening. I sent the above picture to Jon after we spoke because he asked me about the set I was using in the shot when he was demo’ing the phone…

I took 4 stones against a 3 kyu, mostly as a teaching lesson on corners and attacking fuseki. I got a group with an eye to live, but missed out on a key point of attack that the young one at my elbow was quite eager to point out. My opponent left the room for tea and the boy seemed to want to beam laser beam messages into my head. I was not interested in help, but was interested in post-move commentary and variations discussions. He left to go also to the kitchen, presumably to comment on the move he would so desperately have loved to play in my stead. It would have been an even game between my opponent and the observer, so my four stone advantage had him beside himself with possibilities while I was losing ground quickly. When I was called away by work and family, it had been a satisfactory time with some pointers for future study.

I noticed it looked like Larry has now also purchased an iPhone… Right on.  More work happening with iShudan, which he sounded interested in.  Jon revealed while we were kibitzing that he earned money as a programmer on royalties for a non-go related program.  Thats awesome! Adam and I are supposed to meet this evening to do more with the project.  I have made a wiki page or two, and have a todo list to write up. There’s a downloadable archive now up, and with the subversion access completed and working with a test IDE i’m using on this klunky laptop, I might be able to get something done tomorrow on it since my boss gets back tomorrow and can take back the monkey circus =-)

Good night/Good morning (01:27 PST =  09:27 am GMT)

The 13th Move:

Tonights match was at the SGC on Beginners Night, an auspicious event marked by the complete lack of any vehicles at all in the parking lot that appeared to belong to owners inside the same building. See, tonight the USGO Congress ‘07 is in full swing, so many of the regulars are all in Pennsylvania right now. As the evening went on, “in charge” moved from person to senior Go Center person at least three times in an hour. It reminded me of a game of tag with a bunch of 12 year old boys. “notit!”"You’re It! No Tag-backs!”

I played an 8 stone handicap game with a 7 kyu player who I have met before, a young programmer for Microsoft’s Visual C development platform. In our last match on a 13×13 I think it was, he won quite easily. I expected nothing different on the full board but decided to make a try at it. Fighting spirit at hand, we began combat on the full board. this picture is just after he has placed the 13th move of the game, since we started with a whopping 8 stone handicap.  He had to show me how to place them properly, since I was unfamiliar with this.

Midgame:

This is the position at a point just into the midgame, where I stopped to take a quick picture and survey the status so far. He has already established a well defined portion along the left hand wall, walking along the third line. I’m trying to make trades that give profit in exchange for position, and paying attention to the situation in the lower left corner. We are fighting for eyes and development into the center. Score estimate?

Endgame : loss for Black

My opponent had to leave I think for a bus or something, but it was clear to me that this was a loss for Black and we were just playing to find the end of the game. I had just made a rather stupid blunder in the upper right corner of the board. I’m going to try and get a score estimate based on the pictures and reconstructed details. I took about 6 pictures total during the evening, at least one of them looks just fabulous upon examination at home. I keep thinking I need to maybe start a nice photo stream somewhere… I mean, another one

Good learning experience, all around. One positive thing that happened was that a group of about 5 stones were resurrected and saved when I played a ladder-breaker on a set of previously threatened stones. They ended up linking into the left side of the board and living, to swing the score a bit more my way. It is perhaps easy to get overconfident when I play only a single person against whom I am measurably improving over time (Bob). Basic confrontations with higher ranked players can still give me quite a bit of trouble, indicating some basic weakness in the fundamentals. I will spend more time thinking about this later. As always there is a great deal of material available for study, not least of which because of the event on the East Coast that most US Go folks are at right now…

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I love this quote from this evening’s AMA Go Newsletter this evening:”JON BOLEY 6d of Shoreline, WA, is the Program Director at the Seattle Go Center. He won the 2007 Verna Castanza Memorial. Hobbies include dancing, yoga, classical, fusion and jazz guitar. His favorite thing about go is “The dichotomy inherent in the game which is first introduced when one realizes how complex the game is while being so simple.”

I should find and link his myspace page, lol

Tuesday night my friend Bob canceled our game due to his newly announced job offer, since he had to be up and working his first day bright and early Wednesday. So, after work I drove to the SGC for Beginners Night for a game there instead. I played Eric, I think his name was, and he gave me a 7-stone advantage on a full board match. I lost by 40+ points or so, because of at least two large blunders: I failed to make enough eye shape for my 4-5 stones in the lower right, and lost a large capturing race in the upper left that could have swung the game to my favor. It was a close thing for that large dragon-shape, but there seemed to be nothing I could do unless he missed an attack or failed to respond. I did manage to create a couple of ko situations which I think I played correctly to threaten his position, but he allowed me to keep the ko rather than give away the capturing race. It was a pretty thorough spanking, all in all. I believe Eric said he had been studying less than a year or so, and already he is playing well at 8kyu. I want to be an SDK so bad!!!

Towards that end, I am renewing my commitment to continue working tsumego each and every day for a month. I had to leave town for a couple of days last week for work, and then catch up on all the latest family time here, but today marks the beginning of a renewed effort on this. Guo Juan recommends working daily on these to improve reading level, and I believe that based on what we know about “brain exercises” that daily practice can truly make measurable physiological changes and improvements in a players overall abilities. (<–warning, large pdf) I will try to track that here and perhaps I can generate my own data to prove it.

Many many thanks to NannyOgg, a fellow Go-blogger who recommended a solution to the need for a diagram generator: Drago. Here is one of my exercises for today as an example:

and

black to play in both left and right. Can black _absolutely_ kill?

I think these diagrams look lovely, don’t you?

Yesterday was the final day of the seminar, but after the lengthy two day long focus, it was time to have some dinner with the family and allow things to simmer in the back of my mind. I also had to work afterwards, up until 4am early monday morning. I got in late of course, and then left early since Monday late afternoons I spend time alone with my son while Mom is out and about for at least an hour or two every week.

This weekend firmly solidified my love of Go, and was a wonderful success. If you are ever ever able to receive in person instruction from this lady, I highly recommend that you take the opportunity. She has a wonderful and very personal style, that guarantees everyone receives benefit. She peruses the world of students as a teacher of the highest order, and gives freely of her personal wit and style, recounting stories and anecdotes while we play, making us all laugh and smile. I have some pictures of her speaking on the couch at the Seattle Go Center talking to the kyu-level class. I took a rare break to get up and get some stretch time, and get some more tea when I took this shot, as there are many intent Go-players eagerly watching the game and listening to her.

I was quite happy with the outcome of the weekend as a whole, and received special commentary from Guo and others assembled there that I had noticeably improved my game in the short period of her analysis this weekend. She challenged each of us, and me in particular, that if we wanted to improve for certain within a single month, that we should work tsumego each day for a small amount of time, without fail. Just 5 a day, hard enough to be worth looking at, but not so difficult that you are unable to solve them in a half an hour of straight through study. This daily excercise will improve your reading ability, and your analysis skills will thereby profit as well.

She is quite certain of the utility of exercises such as this for us Western players who play for fun, and within a culture that promotes free exchange of ideas and less strict discipline. She was speaking to us as a group and told us in a segue about the students of her youth in China who were strongly drilled every day without particular effort made to explain or justify or convince the children; it simply wasn’t necessary… Young Eastern students grow up within a culture that promotes conformity and regimented rigorous study, Western players contrast with this strongly.

We benefit most from increasing our efforts in the areas we are weakest, this gives us skills and tactics that sharply contrast with the lack of these talents happening organically around us. Eastern players are advised to be creative, break joseki, and think freely to find new and exciting avenues of competitive Go playing, Western students are encouraged by Guo to obtain the discipline and regimentation of our neighbors to improve our reading and lend strength to our otherwise creative but weak endeavors over the board.

I will post SGF files of the games as I record them from the kifu when I have time, and put up links to the pictures as well. In the mean time, namaste’.

Finally have a chance to sit down now at home after spending the day at the Seattle Go Center with Guo Juan. I will publish up the game record for a game I had with Derek, he was another beginner who showed up for today only. Hopefully I will get a chance to review the game with her tomorrow, as well as a nine stone handicap game I played against Leanne, a retired school teacher who used to run Go clubs at nearby schools. She gave me an excellent review, as well as a comment that if I were to fix a particular error of mine, I could gain several kyu almost immediately. I hope that I can assemble at least one record of the game, after a certain point of us both recording to paper, she just started doing the recording for both of us because I was having difficulty and had to keep asking for the move number. I was very grateful for her patience, and her willingness to review the game with me and point out some of the issues. The same kinds of mistakes I’ve seen myself make before, in tone. However, there was some awesome play that was a direct result of the lecture/problems from last night and notes this morning. Don’t push from behind; making the elephant eye is bad shape.

It will take time to put up more, but I need to spend some time unwinding with my non-go playing significant other (NGSO) and getting my rest for tomorrow morning.

One comment from both Leanne and Guo was that with some diligent study that I could definitely up my skill level to the Single Digit Kyu range and shorten the gap between myself and some of the other SGC players within as little as a month. I’m not sure that I’m prepared to do the amount of time they are thinking about within a single month, but I am most certainly encouraged to get serious and get up that ladder!

More later, good night.

Seattle Go Center

Schedule -

06/01 Friday		7:00 PM - 10:00 PM
06/02 Saturday		9:00 AM - 1:00 PM
		1:00 PM - 2:00 PM Lunch
		2:00 PM - 6:00 PM
		6:00 PM - 7:00 PM Dinner
		7:00 PM - 10:00 PM Fun Session
06/03 Sunday		9:00 AM - 1:00 PM
		1:00 PM - 2:00 PM Lunch
		2:00 PM - 6:00 PM

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The Seattle Go Center is proud to present a Workshop by Professional Go Player Guo Juan. Guo Juan, a regular attendee of US Go Congresses, has been teaching American Go players for years. This year, she stops by Seattle to give a 3 day workshop.

After stopping at home and having some dinner, I made it to the SGC with enough time to play a 13×13 game before the night time maintenance window in Amarillo Texas. I think his name was Paul, or maybe kevin? Anyway, he was an unpaired 6 kyu or maybe 9 kyu. He gave me three stones on the board and managed to beat me pretty badly. I resigned once all of my groups were resolved completely. There was one spot where I missed playing at the ko, and lost a big group of perhaps 11 stones. Playing on, I failed to make life in two other border groups, and misread several situations that allowed me to fall behind.

He did review immediately after the game with me for a while, including some talk about a jump into the 3×3 on the shoulder of my handicap stone. with a stone of mine on either side, it is to his profit since he can almost certainly live, and all i can do is drive him downward along one of the sides. in the end it works out that he has nothing to lose. this means i have to make sure profit from this or plan on that issue. press down severely rather than just give it away and allow it to impact or connect elsewhere…

I thanked him for the willingness to play the smaller board and the review and left. I also signed up for the Go Juan seminar this coming weekend, and paid my tuition, Jon said that he will be sending out materials online in sgf format shortly. I hope so, there’s not much time to study them before her arrival!

**UPDATE**: got materials tonight and spent 45 minutes reviewing on my board, but have to work now. will work more and post later.

I have taken a look at the pictures I took while at the Youth Tournament over the weekend, and I will post some highlights as they come to me, along with a link to the pictures and the gallery I have of the full photostream of the event. Gallery direct link is here, as well as off the menu at the top right of the main page. Unfortunately, the shake that you see in many of the pictures causing poor focus is a side effect of trying to hold a 9 month old squirmy toddler while snapping pictures, so sadly many of these shots plain suck. Such it is.

Two of the youngest players are shown here, playing at table two of the junior division. On the left is Hugh Zhang, and playing black on the right is Maverick Lin. These two kids are (I think) about 9 years old, certainly not much older if not close. I watched this game pretty intently during the tournament, since it was the table that was closest to my vantage point and I was amazed at the youth of the two contestants. The ending result was not a huge surprise due to the different rankings of the two players, Maverick was the sole kyu rated player in the final round. I do not know how he did overall, but I would be interesting in reviewing this final game for certain, I will post up the record with some preliminary thoughts later. Of course, my commentary is likely to be the least useful owing to the difference in my level and the level this game is played at, but perhaps the youth of the participants gives me some hope of understanding the fundamental activies and thought processes happening behind the scenes. Perhaps not

I’m here at the Youth Go Tournament, and the final game has completed, with Will going undefeated at 5-0 for the two days. In an amazing final game that felt close up to the last few moves, the penultimate match was also the longest of the final round. I have the game record saved for later analysis, and I have watched as the person recording the game replayed through the opening and gave comments to the two players afterwards. The defeated player was heard to say that at the final moment due to the method of scoring that he had thought it was his victory instead. I have many pictures, and some brief movie clips that I will upload once the final ceremony and the awards are concluded.